Spatial correlations of mobility and immobility in a glass-forming Lennard-Jones liquid

Claudio Donati; Sharon C. Glotzer; Peter H. Poole; Walter Kob; Steven J. Plimpton

doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.60.3107

Spatial correlations of mobility and immobility in a glass-forming Lennard-Jones liquid

Claudio Donati, Sharon C. Glotzer, Peter H. Poole, Walter Kob, and Steven J. Plimpton

Phys. Rev. E 60, 3107 – Published 1 September 1999

Abstract

Using extensive molecular dynamics simulations of an equilibrium, glass-forming Lennard-Jones mixture, we characterize in detail the local atomic motions. We show that spatial correlations exist among particles undergoing extremely large (“mobile”) or extremely small (“immobile”) displacements over a suitably chosen time interval. The immobile particles form the cores of relatively compact clusters, while the mobile particles move cooperatively and form quasi-one-dimensional, stringlike clusters. The strength and length scale of the correlations between mobile particles are found to grow strongly with decreasing temperature, and the mean cluster size appears to diverge near the mode-coupling critical temperature. We show that these correlations in the particle displacements are related to equilibrium fluctuations in the local potential energy and local composition.

Received 7 October 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.60.3107

Authors & Affiliations

Claudio Donati^1,*, Sharon C. Glotzer^1,†, Peter H. Poole², Walter Kob³, and Steven J. Plimpton⁴

¹Polymers Division and Center for Theoretical and Computational Materials Science, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899
²Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada
³Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Staudinger Weg 7, D-55099 Mainz, Germany
⁴Parallel Computational Sciences Department, Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185-1111

^*Present address: Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita di Roma La Sapienza, Piazzale Aldo Moro 2, I-00185 Roma, Italy.
^†Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic address: sharon.glotzer@nist.gov

References (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand

Issue

Vol. 60, Iss. 3 — September 1999

Reuse & Permissions

Access Options

Author publication services for translation and copyediting assistance advertisement

Physical Review E

covering statistical, nonlinear, biological, and soft matter physics